Cleopatra and Antony

by Diana Preston

  Octavian had, like his adoptive father Julius Caesar, shown a single-minded focus in the fourteen years since Caesar’s murder. He had been determined throughout to achieve his ambition of sole power. To do so, he had chosen well in his supporters, in particular Agrippa, and had delegated to them sufficient authority—but no more—to achieve his purposes. He had been prepared to trim to the prevailing winds in his early alliances with Caesar’s murderers but had never lost sight of his ultimate objective. Perhaps, unlike Antony, he had never seen the triumvirate as anything other than an expedient and temporary arrangement. He had been prepared cynically to break commitments he made to Antony during this period despite his sister Octavia’s intervention on her husband’s behalf. He had an innate hypocrisy that allowed him to square in his mind his own ambition with the public good and his version of events with the truth. As a consequence, he had shown himself a master of public relations and propaganda. Unlike Antony, who emerges from all the accounts as the more impulsive and warmhearted personality and, to most tastes, the more likeable, the buttoned-up, self-contained Octavian never took a decision without, like a chess player, weighing not just its immediate impact but also its long-term strategic benefit. He never made a speech without calculating its effect. Suetonius alleged that Octavian “did not even make statements to individuals, or even to his wife Livia, except by writing them down and reading them aloud, lest he say too much or too little by speaking casually.”

  As a consequence of his defeat of Cleopatra and Antony, Octavian was now well on his way to becoming the princeps, or chief citizen, of the Roman state, a title he assumed in 27, together with the appellation “Augustus,” with its implication of dignity, stateliness, even sanctity. As de facto first emperor of Rome, he remained, just as Cleopatra and Antony had been, conscious of his image—sufficiently so, in fact, to order an official portrait of himself depicting a calm, elevated leader to be widely copied and circulated throughout the Roman world. It served as the basis for a variety of surviving sculptures and other portrayals. Significantly, when the Senate offered to name one of the months after him, he asked that it should not be the month of his birth, as in the case of Julius Caesar and July, but Sextillis, the old sixth month but now, under the Julian calendar, the eighth—the month of his victory over Cleopatra and Antony. This became August.

  After forty-four years of successful autocratic rule, during which he centralized the administration of the empire and banished conflict to its borders, where skirmishes with barbarians continued but did not threaten, Augustus died in AD 14. Ironically, many of his centralizing measures and, in particular, his concentration of all power in the hands of a single unelected leader resembled the way the Ptolemies had ruled Egypt. After Augustus’ cremation, his ashes were placed in his great round mausoleum set in a public park, which, it was said, he had designed taking the tomb of Alexander in Alexandria as his inspiration.

  By now Rome also contained many artifacts transported from Egypt. Immediately following the return to Italy of Augustus and his veterans and over the subsequent decades a sort of “Egyptmania” had taken hold. Citizens eagerly imported pharaonic works of art. Sometimes obelisks were reerected in Roman squares to celebrate victories, sometimes in temples to Roman gods and at other times simply to beautify public spaces or to act as giant sundials.* Rarely did those installing them in their picturesque new settings have any consciousness of the original purpose of the works, a sphinx being considered a must-have for any large Roman garden. Egyptian landscapes incorporating such elements as Nile scenes, lotuses, pyramids and crocodiles became commonplace in frescoes and decorative relief sculptures. There was also a fashion for Egyptian jewelry in the form of scarab rings and amulets.

  Many Romans even chose to have their ashes buried in pyramid-shaped tombs. They did so irrespective of their religion, but the other major Egyptian exports to Rome were the cults of Isis, Osiris and other gods. These gods had initially been imported at the beginning of the first century BC but after Cleopatra’s defeat freed them from association with a foreign enemy they began to flourish. The cult of Isis offered life after death to its converts, together with exotic and elaborate rituals accompanied by music, chanting and the burning of incense. Each day before sunrise, the priests presented the statue of Isis to her seated followers who had gathered, shaking their metal rattles in her honor and to drown out any extraneous sounds intruding into the complex rites of the cult. They remained deep in prayer until the sun had risen to be blessed by the assembled worshippers who also celebrated the resurrection of Osiris, god of the underworld, at the daily rebirth of the sun. At two o’clock in the afternoon, a second ceremony was held for the adoration of the sacred water of the Nile. So popular were the cults that the worship of these Egyptian deities continued in some quarters of Rome until the city’s fall.

  The eventual fates of the surviving children of Cleopatra, Antony and Octavian were various and in some cases curious. Cleopatra Selene was married to a young man who as a small boy had, like her, been displayed in a Roman Triumph. This was Juba, the erudite Numidian prince who in 25 was made the ruler of the client kingdom of Mauretania (in present-day Morocco). Their son, whom they named Ptolemy, succeeded his father in AD 23. Cleopatra Selene’s two brothers are assumed to have accompanied her to her new kingdom and, from here, the boys for whom such grand futures were announced by Antony on his silver dais at the Donations of Alexandria passed into obscurity.

  Antony’s two daughters by Octavia left a greater mark on history. Both remained in Rome and one became the mother and both became grandmothers of emperors, albeit notorious ones. The elder Antonia became the grandmother of Nero, while the younger Antonia became the mother of Claudius and grandmother of Caligula.* Octavian allowed Antony’s surviving son by Fulvia, Iullus Antonius, to claim his family inheritance. Under Octavian’s patronage he enjoyed a successful career in Rome, becoming a consul and governor in Asia Minor as well as a poet. However, in 2 BC, age forty-one, he became caught up in a sex scandal involving Octavian’s thirty-six-year-old daughter, Julia. She had first been married to Octavian’s faithful school friend and admiral Agrippa, who died in 12 BC, and at the time of the scandal was wife to Tiberius, the son of her stepmother, Livia, by her first husband.

  Like several other well-born men, Antonius was accused of indulging in sexual debauches with Julia, “who refrained from no sex act possible to a woman.” Allegedly, she had been seen in the dead of night carousing and fornicating in the Forum with Antonius and the others, as well as drunkenly clambering and cavorting over the rostra where Cicero’s head had once been nailed and from which her father had addressed the populace urging the moral regeneration of Rome. The men were charged with treason and some, including Antonius, were forced to commit suicide or executed. Tiberius divorced Julia. As unforgiving of his only daughter’s weaknesses as he was of those of others, Octavian exiled her to an offshore island. Presumably because drink had played a part in her downfall, rather than just for spite, he ordered her guards to allow her no wine. She shared her abstemious life with her mother, Scribonia, abruptly divorced herself by Octavian so many years previously and who voluntarily followed her daughter into exile. Although eventually allowed to return to the mainland, Julia remained in close confinement until she died fourteen years later. She lived to see her former husband, Tiberius, succeed Octavian as emperor since her sons by Agrippa had died before their grandfather.

  Sexual excess continued to play a part in Roman politics. Other women of the imperial family were banished for their appetites. As emperor, Octavian introduced legislation governing the behavior of women, promoting marriage, punishing adultery and generally emphasizing that a woman’s place was in the home bearing children. Nevertheless, Suetonius alleged that well into old age Octavian himself retained “a passion for deflowering girls—who were collected for him from every quarter, even by his wife.”

  Predictably, it was Cleopatra who was the ultimate icon of sexual depravity i
n Roman eyes. Oil lamps depicted her squatting on a giant phallus. Stripped of humanity, intellect and feeling, she was beginning her long, distorted journey through history as the epitome of the scheming, predatory whore, her true story ignored and then forgotten.

  *Cerastes vipera (often called “Cleopatra’s asp”), Vipera berus, Vipera aspis and Cerastes cornutus are all described as asps.

  *The obelisks remained in their new location long after the Caesareum itself had vanished until one was acquired by a Briton, placed in a cylinder of steel on a pontoon boat suitably named Cleopatra and towed toward Britain. During a wild storm in the Bay of Biscay, the tow ropes broke, six men were killed or drowned and the obelisk was adrift for six days, but it was rescued and eventually reached London, where, known as Cleopatra’s Needle, it still stands on the Thames embankment. The other obelisk was transported to New York at the expense of the millionaire William Vanderbilt and in 1881 erected in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  *One such sundial, which Octavian ordered to be brought to Rome and placed in the Campus Martius, is now in the city’s Piazza di Monte Citorio.

  *In ad 40 Caligula murdered Ptolemy of Mauretania—Cleopatra and Antony’s grandson and so, of course, his cousin. The reason was that Ptolemy had dared to wear a more gorgeous purple mantle to the amphitheater than Caligula.

  Postscript: “This Pair So Famous”

  IN THE CLOSING SCENE of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian orders a fitting burial for the man and woman he refers to as “this pair so famous.” Amidst all the confusions and contradictions, propaganda and prejudice that have clouded the story of Cleopatra and Antony for over two millennia, this, at least, is unarguable. They are one of the most enduringly famous couples of history. It is also undoubtedly true that their lives were turbulent and eventful, played out against a backdrop of bitter power struggles, complex conspiracies and bloody battles at a defining time in Rome’s history.

  In analyzing the relationship between Cleopatra and Antony, certain elements always come through, whatever the source and however favorable or unfavorable the author. Their names are always linked—even in the earliest sources—as lovers. There was an undoubted chemistry between them that endured over a decade and produced three children. In many ways they were very similar: charismatic, with an ability to charm; risk takers, sometimes thrill seekers; ambitious and disposed to scheme on a grand scale; passionate lovers of life and relishers of excess. They were also loyal to one another.

  Cleopatra was not the “bitch in heat” nymphomaniac so often portrayed. She had two men in her life, Caesar and then Antony. Neither—moving to the other end of the spectrum—was she the cold-blooded schemer and manipulator of men as she is equally frequently depicted to be. Certainly, she took her first lover, Caesar, because she feared for her throne, indeed her life, and there was an element of calculation. But she developed feelings for the man who fathered her beloved Caesarion and who was, in many ways, her own father figure. When she joined Caesar in Rome, so great was their empathy that he discussed with her his plans for remodeling Rome and for introducing a new calendar. Her influence with Caesar was one of the reasons she was so feared and disliked in Rome. Later, during the civil war that followed her lover’s murder, Cleopatra did not accede to the requests of his assassins for aid, despite the proximity of their armies to Egypt and the consequent risks to herself and her throne. Instead, she attempted to lead her navy to support Antony and Octavian.

  Cleopatra’s relationship with Antony was very different. Though again it began with an element of calculation and self-interest, it developed and transmuted into deep and passionate love. With Caesar, Cleopatra had been the junior and very much younger partner. With Antony, she came to enjoy a relationship of equals unique for the time—a true partnership sexually, emotionally, intellectually, politically, in which each came to depend on the other. She was his daily companion. Unlike his Roman wives, Cleopatra usually accompanied Antony on his campaigns.

  Something of Antony’s attachment to Cleopatra also penetrates the fog of Octavian’s misogynistic propaganda and the centuries of myth building. His feelings for her developed over time. Antony was clearly susceptible to attractive women and would not have been hard to seduce. He also admired and was accustomed to being guided by strong-minded, patrician women. Cleopatra fitted a mold he was used to, with the additional allure that she was a queen and the living incarnation of a goddess. It is not surprising that he fell heavily for her in Tarsus and followed her back to Alexandria for a period of sexual abandon. But his feelings at this early stage, though strong, did not, of course, prevent him from returning to Rome and settling down with Octavia.

  Yet Antony could not forget Cleopatra, to whom, of all the many women in his life, he would make the greatest commitment. That was why he took the politically dangerous step of sending Octavia away and binding himself totally to the Egyptian queen, to whom thereafter he remained uniquely faithful. Sexual passion turned into a bond so strong that together they formulated a novel concept under which Egypt would become almost an equal partner with Rome in the East. Unlike Octavian, Antony had always been comfortable working in a team and sharing ideas—he had been a loyal second in command to Caesar—and had no difficulty regarding Cleopatra, though a woman, as his partner. She guided and reassured him, kept him focused and mitigated the mood swings of his mercurial, seemingly somewhat manic-depressive temperament. That was one reason—though of course there were others—why, when told Cleopatra was dead, he fell on his sword. The thought of life without the lover and friend with whom he had shared everything seemed unendurable.

  There is, of course, much that we can never know and only guess at. That is part of our fascination with this couple whose lives still radiate such sensual, sexual glamour that we sometimes forget the bigger picture. Cleopatra and Antony were not romantic victims being swept to an inevitable doom in some epic tragedy. Almost uniquely in the ancient world, Cleopatra was a female ruler in her own right of a major economic power. Many centuries would pass—perhaps until the time of Elizabeth I—before another woman would show such political shrewdness and staying power. Antony was for a time the most powerful man in the Western world. The motivations and ambitions, decisions and actions of these lovers shaped one of the great power struggles of history—a struggle that, had Cleopatra and Antony succeeded, might have produced a world somewhat different from the one we know today.

  Typical of the mass of myth and propaganda that surrounds Cleopatra, one of the most remembered historical conundrums centers on her and is itself based on a historical inaccuracy. In his Pensées, Pascal asked, what if Cleopatra had had a smaller nose? Would the course of history have been different? Would Antony still have fallen in love with her, or would he have stayed in Rome and overcome Octavian? The question spawned the “Cleopatra’s nose theory of history,” highlighting both how great events depend on small details and the personal relationships behind history, and launching a deluge of modern discussion of historical what-ifs. However, the conundrum ignores evidence from coins showing that Cleopatra had a prominent, long, hooked nose, a reduction in the size of which might have been beneficial, as well as Plutarch’s comment that it was Cleopatra’s personality and voice—not her middling looks—that gave her such charisma.

  Pascal’s question misunderstands the nature of romantic love and physical attraction if not of the symmetry that underlies so much of our appreciation of beauty. It also prompts delightful if idle speculation about the role of personal chemistry, itself as impossible to dissect as love between political leaders. For example, what made Churchill and Roosevelt kindred spirits and, even more, what gave Margaret Thatcher such influence with Reagan and Gorbachev? However, it is perhaps more profitable to speculate what would have happened had Antony been victorious with Cleopatra’s assistance over Octavian.

  Octavian’s triumph marked the ascendance of occidental Rome over the Greeks and the eastern states that ha
d absorbed Greek culture. It allowed Vergil, following Octavian’s imperialistic and chauvinistic party line, first to admit condescendingly that the East might supply better artists, sculptors, rhetoricians and even astronomers but that:

  . . . yours my Roman is the gift of government,

  That is your bent—to impose upon the nations

  The code of peace; to be clement to the conquered,

  But utterly to crush the intransigent.

  More than three hundred years would pass before the East would, with the rise of Constantinople and the subsequent establishment of the Byzantine empire, once more take a share of political power in the Mediterranean.

  Scholars, as well as defining the battle of Actium as one of the major tipping points of history, have argued about what would have happened had Antony been victorious, either at Actium or earlier. Part of the answer depends on at what stage and how he would have won, with its consequences for the balance of power between the two lovers and leaders. If Antony had routed the Parthians and opened up Rome’s path to India and beyond, he could have returned to Rome. His triumph would have easily eclipsed Octavian’s victory over Sextus Pompey and the inhabitants of Illyricum. He would have had much less political need for Cleopatra than if together they had defeated Octavian in a close-fought series of naval and land engagements around Actium.

  In the event of a complete victory over Parthia and the establishment of a Roman hegemony reaching as far as India, both contemporary and ancient history show that one of the most difficult feats would have been to retain order and control over such a vast dominion after the initial military victory. If Antony had done so, it is possible that he would have come to an agreement with Octavian establishing a duumvirate whereby Octavian ruled his existing western possessions from Rome and Antony an eastern empire consisting of a combination of Roman provinces and client kingdoms from Alexandria. While Antony still would have needed Cleopatra emotionally, he would have been unlikely to have needed politically to move so quickly to please her with such an ostentatious and elaborate ceremony as the Donations of Alexandria—such anathema to Roman society. Their ideas for a partnership between Rome and Egypt could have been developed more slowly and privately. In these circumstances, Antony and Octavian might have coexisted uneasily until Antony’s death—the latter would have been around fifty at the time of his Triumph and had lived a dissipated life. Depending on how long Antony in fact lived, the two halves of the empire might have become so distinct in culture and administration that Octavian would not have felt able to confront Antony’s successor, leading to a much earlier development of separate empires in the east and west.